


Successfully Failing

by do_it_to_julia



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, Awkwardness, Dubious Consent due to Sex Pollen, First Time, Frottage, Hallucinogens, Implied/referenced involuntary exhibitionism, M/M, Mission Fic, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Pining, Post-TLJ, Sex Pollen, Smut, pre-tros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:02:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24459412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/do_it_to_julia/pseuds/do_it_to_julia
Summary: “Okay,” Leia said, in one long, weary sigh, as if readying herself for what she was about to hear. “Now that you’ve both been discharged by medical, why don’t we start from the beginning?”Poe cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied huskily. (How was his voice still so sexy? After everything? And how was Finn even thinking about that? He felt like screaming “Haven’t you done enough?!” down at his own dick but figured that probably wouldn’t help the situation.)Finn volunteers to go on a survey mission with Poe, in the hope it'll give him a chance to test the waters, but he's still struggling to fit in with life outside of the First Order and has no idea how to make the first move. Good thing there's no hallucinogenic sex pollen around to complicate the situation! OR IS THERE? (Spoilers: there definitely is.)
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 14
Kudos: 122
Collections: Heat Fic Summer 2020





	Successfully Failing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



> I love this ship, but I've never written for it before, so I hope it's okay!

_**Today** _

There was a love bite on Poe’s neck.

Finn stared at it as Leia settled herself into the chair. She clasped her hands atop the cargo crate in front of her as if she were still in her Senator’s office and not a hastily-rearranged supply closet on board a U-55 Loadlifter orbiting Ajan Kloss.

Finn had been through exactly one round of decontamination and two showers. His clothes had been confiscated and irradiated and scanned to within an inch of their life; his hair was dry and verging on frizzy because the disinfectant soap in Kalonia’s medikit was basically one step down from bleach.

He felt certain that Poe had endured the same, and perhaps some irrational part of Finn had assumed that the evidence of their encounter would have been washed away with the dirt and leaves. But there it was, belligerently visible in the soft juncture between Poe's jaw and throat. Taunting him.

He forced himself to stop looking. This debrief was going to be awkward enough already without Finn staring at Poe the whole time. Plus, if Poe looked back, that might mean eye contact, and Finn was _definitely_ not ready for eye contact just yet.

“Okay,” Leia said, in one long, weary sigh, as if readying herself for what she was about to hear. “Now that you’ve both been discharged by medical, why don’t we start from the beginning?”

Poe cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied huskily. (How was his voice still so sexy? After everything? And how was Finn even _thinking_ about that? He felt like screaming “Haven’t you done enough?!” down at his own dick but figured that probably wouldn’t help the situation.)

Poe was still speaking in low and slightly abashed tones. “Mission commenced at 0900 hours yesterday, and, uh, we made landfall about 0940…”

* * *

_**Yesterday** _

Their scans had indicated a few promising sites on Ajan Kloss, and while the moon had no major predators, the jungle was thick enough that it was deemed too much of a risk to just set down and make camp any-old-where. When the call went out for volunteer surveyors, Finn and Poe were the first to sign up.

Well - _Poe_ was the first to sign up. Finn signed up because the possibilities of sharing a tent with Poe were more attractive than the risk of being murdered by some undiscovered species of sentient tree, or something.

He wanted to help the Resistance too. Obviously. But Poe was the motivating factor.

Now, as the muggy jungle air seethed around them and the sun beat punishingly down through the sparse canopy above, Finn was reassessing his expectations. He’d planned to test the waters a little, do some light flirting, maybe find an excuse to get his shirt off, but the mental image of Poe eyeing him up while he hefted tent poles and flexed attractively was quickly being replaced by the reality of having the absolute fuck bitten out of him by bugs while he slowly drowned in his own sweat.

 _Not_ sexy.

He gripped the straps of his backpack and trudged along behind the pilot, resigning himself to an awkward two days of applying insect repellent and lacking the courage or the inclination to just say to Poe, “Hey, I think you’re cute” because not _only_ was Finn woefully inexperienced in this regard but he’d also just realized that confessing your attraction to someone while on a 48-hour mission alone with them was _awkward as fuck_.

Finn cursed himself for about the eighth or ninth time today, swatting ineffectually at something that buzzed past his face, and wished - also not for the first time - that Rey was here. Rey knew all about this stuff. Maybe she could even use the Force to sense whether Poe was into him, or… something. Was that creepy? Actually, yeah, it probably was.

“You okay there, bud?” called Poe, cutting off Finn’s internal monologue.

“Yep. I’m good. All good here,” said Finn.

 _You cowardly fuck_ , said Finn’s inner voice.

Finn told it to kriff off.

* * *

_**Present day** _

“So how far into the mission did you encounter the... contaminant?” Leia asked, with a slight pause before the last word as if she was trying to think of a polite euphemism. “Is there any chance that the rest of the site might be usable?”

“Well, I took plant and soil samples at five hundred metre intervals. They’re all with Kalonia, so she’ll know better than me. But given the timescale here, I’d personally feel better off being as far from that area of the jungle as possible,” Poe told her. Finn stared at his own lap, cheeks beginning to burn.

Poe carried on. “I’d say it was about… three or four kilometres in? Finn, buddy, help me out here.”

“Uh, three and a half,” Finn muttered. “We were doing sample number-”

“-seven, right. I was about to break some off-”

* * *

**_Yesterday_ **

“Oh, hey. Hey! Don’t touch those, man.” Hurriedly, Finn dumped the backpack and jogged toward Poe. The pilot’s gloved hand was centimetres away from a bulbous, purplish growth attached to the bark of a tree, but it drew back on Finn’s approach.

“What, these?” Poe asked.

“Yeah, I’ve seen these before, on Starkiller.” Finn fished a pair of tongs from Poe’s discarded satchel and examined the tree, searching for a smaller growth he could break off. “It’s a kind of parasitic fungus. Funny story, actually; they sent a bunch of us out with flamethrowers to clear it because the spores were clogging the air vents. Turns out it’s basically harmless until you set fire to it and breathe in the smoke.”

“Oof. What did you do?”

“Me? Nothing. Helmet filtered it out. Nobody knew anything was wrong until a couple officers came down to check on us and Commander Datoo started talking about how he could hear colours.”

Poe laughed as Finn broke off a small section of infected bark and carefully dropped the whole thing into a sample container. “So it’s a hallucinogen?”

“Among other things.” Finn screwed the top of the flask on tight. “I, uh, heard stories.”

“Come on, you can’t just leave it there, Finn. You know I’m gonna be wondering now.”

“Well - I’m just repeating what I heard, but apparently it won’t _kill_ you. Just makes you delirious for twelve hours or so. And uh…” What should he say here? Aroused? _Amorous?_ None of the First Order’s stiffly-narrated sex education holos had covered how to talk about hallucinogenic sex fungus with a hot guy without sounding like… well, like a sex education holo narrated by Brendol Hux. (He gave a slight shudder at the memory and then carried on.) “It’s also sort of a, an aphrodisiac.”

Poe blinked, clearly amused.

“So it makes you horny?”

“ _Uncomfortably_ horny, yeah. Plus it lowers inhibition. So don’t break any of the spores, and make sure the lid stays tight on that sample jar. I don’t want to take any risks.”

“Noted. Guess we’ll have to write this area off in our report.”

They picked up their bags and progressed together in silence before Poe couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Okay, I’m sorry. You’ve gotta tell me how you know that.”

Finn sighed, but the conversation flowed a little easier, now. “Like I said, I'm just repeating what I heard. All I know is that by the time we came back in, Datoo and Rodinon had both gone down a rank and someone was disinfecting the kriff out of the mess hall floor.”

* * *

_**Today** _

“So, uh, anyway, once we stopped seeing the growths, we made a note of our coordinates and just assumed we were out of the woods. So to speak,” Finn said. “Actually we were technically still in the woods. But. You know what I mean.”

“We thought we were out of... fungus range,” added Poe, helpfully. Finn nodded rapidly. Leia also nodded, but more slowly, and with some dignity, despite the topic at hand.

“So you carried on,” she prompted.

“We carried on," said Finn.

* * *

_**Yesterday** _

It wasn’t as bad as Finn had expected. He soon got used to the heat (although they both kept their shirts on) and after a couple of layers of repellent, the insects got the message. They’d stop every half K, take samples, then carry on, moving in a grid pattern through the survey area, and in the meanwhile, they talked.

Poe was good company, although Finn already knew that. It was part of why he liked him so much. He was funny. Nobody in the First Order had really been _funny_ , although he’d once heard Captain Phasma laughing at a stormtrooper who’d somehow managed to shoot off half his own butt cheek in a training exercise. But Poe was funny in a _non_ -horrifying-and-murdery way. It made a nice change.

Each time Poe smiled back at him, Finn felt a little less like the awkward, fumbling outsider who couldn’t function socially outside of the disturbing totalitarian regime he’d been brought up in. By the time they were pitching their tent, he could almost pretend he was a regular guy. It was a fantasy he’d entertained a few times since he and Poe had first met - that he’d had a normal upbringing on a normal planet, and that nobody had ever wanted to kill him or reprogram him or swing a lightsaber at him.

And yes, the tattered remnants of the Resistance were still orbiting high above, and the First Order still wanted to wipe them out, and the guy with the lightsaber still assumedly wanted to swing it at him a whole bunch. But now, with the sun setting through the trees and the birdsong gently softening into silence, it wasn’t so hard to imagine that he had the life he wanted.

Poe brushed away the loam from the forest floor and tapped it, thinking.

“Canopy’s a little thin here,” he said. “Ever made a campfire?”

“Not really.” Finn rolled his shoulders, now aching from the weight of his pack, and sat down on a fallen log. “We had lessons, but only officers got actual field training. Guess they weren’t so worried about troopers having survival skills.”

Poe went quiet a second. Finn swore silently. He had to go and make it awkward, didn’t he? But then Poe’s face broke into a grin.

“Oh, man,” he said. “Go get some logs. You have no idea what you’ve been missing.”

* * *

_**Today** _

Leia pinched the bridge of her nose.

“The fungus was in the wood,” she sighed.

“The fungus was in the wood,” Poe confirmed, resigned.

* * *

_**Yesterday** _

“Finn,” Poe said, out of the blue, once they’d finished their ration packs and the campfire was blazing bright between them. “Am I making you nervous, somehow?”

“What? No,” Finn lied. “Why, uh, why would you think that? I mean we’re friends. Right? We are definitely friends and I... haven’t misread this?”

“See, this is what I’m talking about.” Poe picked up a stick and poked the fire. Apparently it was a thing you did with campfires, even if they didn’t need stirring up. (He was shirtless, too, but Finn wasn’t sure if that was a campfire thing or a Poe thing or what. He wasn’t complaining, though.) “I’ve seen you jump into a TIE fighter with a complete stranger and fire at your own comrades because it was the right thing to do. You saved me from torture and almost certain death; you _literally faced down Kylo Ren_. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. But this whole mission, it just seems like…” He thought for a second. “Okay. So, earlier on, you tell me this story about a trooper shooting off his own butt cheek-”

“-half.”

“ _-half_ his butt cheek, and you immediately follow it up with an apology because it involved someone getting hurt and you know that’s not really funny but you’re still not really used to being outside the First Order and so on, and, buddy… relax. You don’t have to assume that you’re fucking up every time you open your mouth, and even if you do fuck up, you don’t have to justify that to me. I know things are gonna be weird for you, sometimes. And yes, we’re friends.” He looked him dead in the eye. “Or I hope we are. Because I like you a lot.”

Finn’s heart caught in his throat.

“We are,” he said. “And I.” Oh kriff. Even after all Poe’s reassurance, Finn felt like he was in too deep. Was this some kind of signal? Is that why Poe had taken his shirt off? Or did _I like you a lot_ imply _just as friends_? He swallowed. “I like you a lot too, Poe.”

Poe smiled at him. For a moment, everything was perfect. And then Poe frowned, and took in a deep breath.

“Uh. Finn?”

Shit. Finn knew what was coming next. _I just want to clear the air,_ he’d say, or _I don’t want you to misinterpret me, I like you as a friend, but_ … “What’s up?” he said, out loud.

Poe took in another breath, deep and a little agitated. “Are you sure there weren’t any of those pods around here? Because, uh. I have a boner.”

Finn blinked rapidly at him. “You have a... boner,” he repeated. Alright, this was definitely a turn he hadn’t expected.

“Yeah, I mean it could just be a... a regular boner - I mean you're an attractive guy, and I've been sweet on you for a while - but I can’t help noticing that I’m... well, it’s a cloudless night and I’m stripped to the waist and I’m still… really, really warm.”

“Huh.” That was a lot to process. Finn paused and took stock. “Yeah, uh, Poe? I got a, a little - I mean, not a little but a, a _normal-sized_ problem too.”

“Shit.” Poe rubbed his face, then stared down at his hands. “Okay. We’re gonna need to radio in, and I think you need to do it, because there is definitely something wrong with my hands.” He lifted them up. They looked the same as they always did. “You seeing this?”

“Not… really,” Finn admitted. He was starting to panic. His skin felt prickly with sweat, and now he’d noticed the situation between his legs it was _very_ hard to ignore. His thoughts started to swirl, like dye poured into water. “I don’t, uh. I don’t remember anyone saying anything about hands.”

“They’re _huge_. They’re like...” Poe trailed off. He moved his hands closer to his face, then away again, then back and forth a few times while the crease between his eyebrows grew deep with confusion.

"Poe," Finn said, as gently as he could. "Buddy. I think you might be high."

"Huh. That _would_ explain a few things."

"Yeah. Uh. Why don't you go lie down in the tent, and, and don't touch anything, and I'll radio in for help."

"Just so you know," Poe said, conversationally, "I think I'm gonna be jacking off while you do that."

Tantilizing and unhelpful images flooded Finn's mind. "Yep," he said, in a slightly strained voice. "Okay. Noted."

* * *

_**Today** _

Finn, obviously, was not relaying _every_ detail of this to Leia, and it soon became clear that the General was doing some polite summarizing of her own. She did not, for example, mention the fact that Finn had spent about five minutes rhapsodizing about Poe's hair over the comm line, and had needed to be repeatedly coaxed back into describing the situation. Dr Kalonia had been remarkably patient with him. Dimly, Finn recalled being told that it would take the medical team three or four hours to get prepped and get down there, and that he and Poe should stay calm and stay hydrated in the interim. "Okay, bye, I love you," Finn had responded.

None of this made its way into Leia's account of what had been happening in the meanwhile.

Apparently Rose Tico had been invaluable in rustling up enough PPE to equip the rescue team, and while Kalonia's personal medical database made no mention of hallucinogenic sex fungus, she was already primed and ready to analyse the sample as soon as they returned to orbit.

What Leia _did_ say was, "We got the impression you were already... under the effects of the toxin when you radioed in," and Finn felt his cheeks burning. _Please, please let me not have mentioned my penis_ , he thought.

* * *

_**Yesterday** _

When Finn returned, the tent flaps were open, and he could hear a pained moaning from inside. "Poe...?" he said. The sound was at once concerning and arousing; Finn's cock already ached with each throb of his heartbeat, and the husky tenor of Poe's response only compounded the heat building in his groin.

"It's not helping!"

"What?" Finn's flesh was prickling with sweat. He'd discarded his shirt and jacket during the call, and was giving serious consideration to the rest of his clothing.

"Jacking off. It's not helping," croaked Poe. "Oh, fuck. I feel like I'm burning up."

Finn swallowed and looked up at the darkened sky. It swirled unhelpfully in his vision, and he had the faint impression that the trees were melting. "Okay," he breathed. "They're sending a team down and we're supposed to, uh, drink water...?"

"Yeah, we don't... have a lot of that left. Sorry." Poe was panting audibly. "How - how long are they gonna be?"

"A few hours, maybe?" Finn could no longer remember all the details. "So, I think the best thing is that you stay _inside_ the tent, and I stay _outside_ the tent, because if we're both _inside_ the tent, then that's gonna... I'm not gonna be able to..."

He trailed off. There was a shuffling, and suddenly Poe's head and shoulders were poking out of the tent, facing the sky, as if he'd maneuvered himself round on his back. Dust and broken twigs from the forest floor snagged in his thick, dark hair.

"Can I ask you a question?" he gasped.

"Uh-huh," Finn said, and tried not to concentrate too hard on the fact that Poe was probably naked by now.

"If we were... here," Poe said, between breaths, "And there was no... fungus, and I asked if you wanted to, you know, come and take a turn in the cockpit for a while... what would you say?"

"By cockpit, you mean..."

"I mean my dick."

"Okay," Finn managed, head spinning, cock pulsing. "I would say yes."

"Yeah. Exactly." Poe nodded. "So... unless you have a genuine objection, in which case I absolutely respect that, I - oh, you're already taking off your pants. Oh, thank fuck."

Discarding his shoes and trousers where they fell, Finn dropped to his knees, took the pilot's upside-down face in his hands, and kissed him. Poe lips were hot and eager, and he wrapped his arms around Finn's shoulders as their mouths opened to each other, exploring, surging. When the two finally broke off, Poe rested a hand on Finn's cheek.

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"Uh-huh," Finn replied, still dazed.

"Can we do this outside? Because it's really, _really_ hot in here."

Finn had just about enough presence of mind to snatch the sleeping bag from inside the tent and lay it on the ground before the sight of Poe standing naked and hard before him drove away all rational thought. Poe didn't give him long to appreciate this breathtaking vision, because within moments his mouth was on Finn's again and he was dragging their entwined bodies to the floor. The sleeping bag's synthetic, clinging outer layer, usually so unpleasant on the skin, was barely noticeable against the far more enthralling feel of Poe's flesh against his own.

The thought of pulling away, even for an instant, was unimaginable. He needed him, with an intensity of hunger he'd never experienced before, and Poe seemed to feel the same way; his arms were tight around Finn as they ground against each other. The sweat-slick slide of Poe's cock against his own, the not-unpleasant scratch of the wiry dark hair around it, even the way Poe's knee had wedged itself between Finn's thighs - he could have come from that alone. Then Poe's hand slipped between their stomachs and around their members, and if the grinding had been good then this was _sheer ecstasy_.

Before this, the only hand Finn had ever felt on his dick had been his own. He was _definitely_ ruined for that now. Poe's palm was hot and slick, and he was moaning into Finn's mouth in a way that sent thrills down his spine. He reached between them, rubbing the sensitive juncture between Poe's stomach and thigh before teasing at the pilot's balls with a boldness he'd never have shown sober. Some mutual, lust-addled understanding led Finn to take hold of their cocks as Poe grabbed his ass and squeezed, his fingers grazing deliciously into Finn's cleft.

"Gonna come," Poe gasped. Finn abandoned himself for a moment to concentrate on Poe, and milked his cock through the orgasm as Poe shuddered against him. The very sight of him was almost enough to bring Finn off untouched, and when the evidence of Poe's pleasure splashed warm against his belly and chest, he very nearly did. But then Poe was drawing back, and Finn made an incoherent noise of protest which turned into a cry when the other man's hot lips closed around his shaft.

The wet warmth of him and the skilled pressure of his tongue drew Finn's orgasm from him within moments. He didn't even have time to warn Poe, although the pilot seemed not to mind. He swallowed eagerly, sucking and lapping around the head until Finn began, finally, to soften.

Exhausted, Poe crawled up alongside him and flopped onto his back. Finn rolled onto his own. Neither of them spoke for a while, but Poe reached for Finn's hand and squeezed it.

The fire within him was still there, and he could feel himself getting hard again already, but it was enough, for now, to feel their fingers interlaced, and to hear the rhythm of his breaths.

* * *

_**Today** _

"I have to ask," said Leia, with regret in her tone. "Given the state we found you in..."

( _Passed out, naked and covered in jizz on the forest floor_ , Finn's brain interjected unhelpfully.)

"... are there going to be any... issues here? I know you both told Dr Kalonia separately that as far as you're concerned there was no violation of consent, but the two of you work closely and something like this is inevitably going to affect your relationship."

"I'm good," Poe offered, before glancing at Finn guiltily. "I mean. From my point of view, I don't think anything negative is going to... come out of this. Obviously, I haven't... we haven't spoken to each other, so Finn, if you-"

"No, I'm cool," Finn spluttered. "I'm good. All good here." The words 'anything negative' held connotations that made something in Finn's chest leap and start dancing, although he was trying hard not to hold out false hope. Would they really be okay after this, or was Poe going to give him the cold shoulder as soon as they left the room?

When Leia finally dismissed them, with an order to get some rest, Poe was quick to answer that particular worry. He hung back outside the supply-closet-slash-office, and cocked his head.

"So, listen," he said, his dark eyes holding Finn's. "I know that was all... really weird, and you might... need some time. But I want you to know that I meant everything I said. About being sweet on you, and about-"

Finn couldn't help it. He kissed him. And Poe, oh, _thank fuck_ , kissed back.

"Sorry," he muttered, after he and Poe had finally broken off again. "I absolutely should have asked first."

"Nah, I think you read the room pretty well there. Full disclosure, I was definitely planning to kiss you too."

A smile broke out unbidden over Finn's face. He took Poe's hand.

"So I was thinking," he said, "After we've recovered, and got set up, and all... maybe we could... have a do-over?"

"You mean without the, the accidentally drugging ourselves and me getting all leaves and twigs up in my crack?" Poe replied, with a smirk. "Yeah. That sounds good. But, uh, I'm gonna need to get a lot of sleep first." He tilted his head invitingly. "Join me?"

"Absolutely. You've got a hickey, by the way. Sorry, I should have said earlier."

"Don't worry about it, bud. You know, I actually have multiple love bites? You should see me with my clothes off. And yes, that is an invitation."

Finn's cheeks were starting to ache with how much he was smiling, but it was worth it. He let Poe lead him off. The war could wait, for now.


End file.
